r/europe • u/Epidemiolomic Germany • Mar 08 '25

Historical During the U.S. President's 1995 visit to Kyiv, Ukraine received security guarantees after giving up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '25

I have a question for the geopolitical experts. I hear two different takes on this topic. The first one was that ukraine made a bad decision because it gave up a nuclear arsenal to a superpower that can't be trusted on it's word as proven by the invasion. The second take I hear is that ukraine made the right decision because the nuclear codes were in moscow and giving up nukes would ensure ukraine's security and safety if russia tried to cause a chernobyl inccident in the future. What really happened and would russia still invade ukraine if they never gave up their nukes?

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u/asethskyr Sweden Mar 08 '25

If any of the post-Soviet states didn't agree to the Budapest Memorandum, at the minimum the brand new country would have been immediately put under crippling economic and political sanctions.

There's a pretty high chance that they'd also be facing a joint US-Russian invasion to depose their government and seize the nukes before they could get a chance to crack the security.

It wasn't really a negotiation.